The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) is the largest organization of Location Managers and Location Scouts in the motion picture, television, commercial and print production industries. Their membership plays a vital role in the creativ
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42 • LMGI COMPASS | Spring 2018 "When I started with Ava, she wanted to make sure we had a di- verse cast in front of the camera and a diverse crew behind the camera," executive producer Doug Merrifield says. "Knowing that Ava rebooted the movie to be in contemporary urban Los Angeles, I needed somebody who was familiar with working there. Alison just ticked off all those boxes. She is very quick on her feet. She could always handle last-minute shooting chang- es. She's really good at rolling with the punches." Taylor, whose recent films include Straight Outta Compton and The Purge: Election Year, says, "My department has always had black folks, Latinos and women. White people are usually in the minority. I'm usually the only department to have a team that looks like mine." "We had a great experience (with diversity)," Merrifield says. "If you're used to working with similar people, it forces you to get out of your comfort zone. For this movie, we used all ethnicities and genders. Having a crew that's more reflective of today's so- ciety just takes a few more phone calls to find qualified people out there. They're just waiting for the opportunity to get a step up and advance in their careers. It was really a positive experi- ence and something I'll be carrying forward." "The first day I walked into the production office, I sensed there was something different," Wrinkle location scout Lori Balton, LMGI says. "Eventually, I realized that there were people of color and women everywhere. I hope that's a change that will continue. Typically, I'm the only female in the scout van." A Wrinkle in Time is the first big-budget film to take advantage of California's Film & Television Tax Credit Program, Executive Director of the California Film Commission Amy Lemisch says. "Our previous iteration didn't allow budgets over $75 million, but our goal was to attract some of the biggest budget films back to California. We want them because they have such a big spending footprint. Since the program was revised, we've had about eight of them. We've definitely seen a turn for the bet- ter." Lemisch noted that the current tax incentives will expire in June 2020, but legislation is pending to renew them for an- other five years. "The other great thing about A Wrinkle in Time (which received an $18.1 million tax credit) is that it filmed out- side the (30-mile) zone, all the way up to Humboldt County. We don't often get a large movie to go that far." Without the California incentives, Taylor might have been out of a job. "The incentives were a very big deal," she says. "When I started on Wrinkle, I was hired just as a scout. Lori was scout- ing in Northern California, and there was another scout in At- lanta. If we didn't get the (tax incentive) money, the company was prepared to open production offices in Atlanta. They were double-prepping. They were hoping to shoot in California, but we would have gotten on planes and gone to Atlanta a day af- ter the announcement if they hadn't given us the tax incentive. They might not have kept me. When we got the tax incentive, they offered me the location manager position." Wrinkle provided a new kind of challenge for Taylor. "Most of my projects have had a lot more locations," she says, "and within that large number, certain ones have to be right. You get a little more latitude on others—on TV, you compromise a lot. On Wrin- kle, we had to get everything right because we really wanted to make Ava happy. We didn't have a lot of locations, but each one was very specific and not one of them was easy. Each had a se- ries of hoops we had to jump through. It was crazy! "It took a lot of negotiation with the L.A. School District (in order to film at Crenshaw High School when school was in session). For the Camazotz suburbs, we had to make arrange- ments with the military and go through all those layers. When we were shooting the Camazotz forest in Humboldt County, Film Commissioner Cassandra Hesseltine was super-helpful. Reese Witherspoon and Storm Reid in a scene filmed in New Zealand. Continued on page 45